Guest Install

Windows 10

• Download Windows 10 Disc Image
• VirtualBox New
  • Skip Unattended Install (unless already have a licence key)
• Microsoft Activation Scripts
  • Admin Powershell irm https://massgrave.dev/get | iex

Compressing Disks

• HowToGeek

Windows Guest

• defrag
• get sdelete from SysInternals
• sdelete64.exe -z c:

Host

• vboxmanage modifymedium disk some-disk001.vdi --compact

Fix I/O Performance

https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html#iocaching

vboxmanage storagectl win10pro --name SATA --hostiocache on

Remote Display

Using native RDP

• disable VRDE
• in Windows: system settings Allow Remote Desktop, disable Network Level Authentication
• set a user password (to avoid "account restricted")
• in VirtualBox port forward host 3389 to guest 3389 (default host IP is already 0.0.0.0)

Using VRDE

• Needs Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack (downloads)

sudo vboxmanage extpack install ./Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-7.0.8.vbox-extpack
vboxmanage modifyvm WinDev2212Eval --vrde=on --vrde-address=0.0.0.0  # --vrde-port=3389
vboxmanage start WinDev2212Eval --type headless

Optimize

• Optimize Windows for performance
• Desktop background: solid gray
• Remmina: disable smooth scrolling

Filesystems

Sharing Git Repos

• Mounting a linux-hosted git repo into the Windows VM doesn't work because the git cache format is different between Windows and Linux